Measuring Cybercrime as a Service (CaaS) Offerings in a Cybercrime Forum

The emergence of Cybercrime-as-a-Service (CaaS) is a critical evolution in the cybercrime landscape. A key area of research on CaaS is where and how the supply of CaaS is being matched with demand. Next to underground marketplaces and custom websites, cybercrime forums provide an important channel for CaaS suppliers to attract customers. Our...

Go See a Specialist? Predicting Cybercrime Sales on Online Anonymous Markets from Vendor and Product Characteristics

Many cybercriminal entrepreneurs lack the skills and techniques to provision certain parts of their business model, leading them to outsource these parts to specialized criminal vendors. Online anonymous markets, from Silk Road to AlphaBay, have been used to search for these products and contract with their criminal vendors. While one listing of...

Plug and Prey? Measuring the Commoditization of Cybercrime via Online Anonymous Markets

Researchers have observed the increasing commoditization of cybercrime, that is, the offering of capabilities, services, and resources as commodities by specialized suppliers in the underground economy. Commoditization enables outsourcing, thus lowering entry barriers for aspiring criminals, and potentially driving further growth in cybercrime....

Discerning Novel Value Chains in Financial Malware: On the Economic Incentives and Criminal Business Models in Financial Malware Schemes

Fraud with online payment services is an ongoing problem, with significant financial-economic and societal impact. One of the main modus operandi is financial malware that compromises consumer and corporate devices, thereby potentially undermining the security of critical financial systems. Recent research into the underground economy has...

Estimating the costs of consumer-facing cybercrime: A tailored instrument and representative data for six EU countries

While cybercrime has existed for many years and is still reported to be a growing problem, reliable estimates of the economic impacts are rare. We develop a survey instrument tailored to measure the costs of consumer-facing cybercrime systematically, by aggregating different cost factors into direct losses and expenses for protection measures....